Excerpt #1 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
The great majority of religious thought originated thousands of years ago in the infancy of our intelligence.
These untested collections of dogmatic principles — antiquated, divisive, and dysfunctional — were formed before the age of science.
They were written by men and women, often self-proclaimed priests and priestesses, profoundly ignorant of our world as we know it today.
The effect of these flawed creeds has not been to bring us together but to permanently separate us.
The violence in our world is due to too much religion rather than too little.
We praise distant mythological gods as we exploit our neighbors.
We dream of the “hereafter” as we destroy the “here”.
The inconsistencies and incredibilities of traditional religions, derived typically from supernatural sources and that which is referred to as “divine revelation”, are nothing more than a fantasy and delusion left over from the ignorant and superstitious childhood of the human race.
Religions Are Mainstream, Active, and Destructive
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it’s ridiculed. Second, it’s violently opposed. Third, it’s accepted as self-evident.” – Schopenhauer
“Religious ideas are subject to the same laws of evolution that govern everything else in the universe.” – Gandhi
“To insist on a spiritual practice that served us in the past is to carry the raft on our backs after we have crossed the river.” – Buddha
Having crossed the river myself, I ditched the raft.
This book is a critique of ancient religious belief systems still in practice today in the form of modern-day traditional religions.
These religions are mainstream, active, and destructive.
Even though the stories that formed them are antiquated, inconsistent, and discredited, these religions continue to control countless minds and complicate, often cause, many of the world’s wars, terrorist strikes, senseless killings, and social injustices.
Some argue rightly that religions historically have provided an ethos of community service and teachings that emphasize aid to the poor and ill.
The flip side is that religion allied itself with political power.
Theocracies worked hand in glove with monarchies.
Prophecyand revelation was engineered to maintain tyrants in power over an ignorant and superstitious populace.
The result has been to concentrate and maintain wealth and power in the hands of the few.
Religion, with fallacious authority, often provides noble-sounding excuses for warfare.
History shows there is no end to what people ginned up on their particular form of self-righteousness have done and will do.
Humanity must be weaned off of this pernicious, dogmatic, delusional, and divisive, war-causing form of intoxication.
While it is true that useful insights, universal wisdom, ethical guidance, comfort, and inspiration can be found scattered throughout ancient religious traditions — as well as an abundance of blatant absurdities — and the communities formed around them, none of this is neither unique or profuse as that which can be found in a plethora of secular traditions and communities.
Religious adherents allege problematically that their truths, derived from their particular deity, are inerrant and infallible.
This results in incendiary claims to the exclusive possession of ‘truth’, fans the flames of tribalism, and has fomented bloody discord.
One would have to have his head deep in the sand and his mind intoxicated with dogma not to see the endless problems associated with these old religions.
Religion, with all its elaborate rituals, costumes and falsehoods, is likely the world’s longest, most magnificent and pernicious charade.
It’s time for humanity to travel on a new track: reality.